Hated the quickfire with most everyone doing pretty much the same ****. Glad the one actual creative dish won.
The elimination challenge was cool. I really like the heavily cooking focused ones with a small twist.
Seemed insane for tonya, the rustic homey brunch chef to be the one ending up in the precision round. But also seems like every chef in this contest should have an idea of what temp is rare/med-rare/etc. Even without that big deduction, I think she would have been gone due to simply not having the precise technique that round was all about.
Sick looking freestyle dish by Joe, very impressive.
Oh, Brooke very hot as always. Really into Adrienne as well.
Claudette kind of grew on me in LCK when she was talking some trash and backing it up, but working with others doesn't seem to be her forte. She's clearly the "villain" of this season but it's so hard to tell from editing -- from what we saw, it looked like she was helping (or at least making an effort to) and Tanya was being passive-aggressive and annoying. The speed round is also clearly the one where help is the most important, so I'm not sure what Tanya was expecting there. I was pretty happy to see her leave after she snapped at Carrie, who seems like the nicest person on earth.
I didn't notice any sort of tricky editing with the John Besh thing, so that was pretty phenomenally done. I never would have guessed he was there.
It's hard to know how it really went down since we only see the heavily edited version, but it seemed to me like Tanya immediately knew she screwed up on the temp and then just crumbled/gave up.
Eh, not a fan of either Claudette or Tanya so I was happy enough knowing one of them was getting axed. I like Carrie, the Colorado chef and Fatima! I was sad to hear Fatima's battling cancer atm. Hopefully she beats it like a meringue!
Tanya seems old school and likely has never cooked knowing proper temperatures, she just knows by feel/look how something should be cooked. That said, she failed in her precision cuts and really botched the challenge. Also, a true Top Chef contender needs to know accurate temps and technique to win the competition so I was fine with her leaving.
Claudette seems pretty worthless and not long for the competition. Its pretty sad that the two LCK chefs who made it back will likely both be gone within weeks of returning.
Yea how do you not know what the cooking temperature is supposed to be? Especially when told after the QF that part of the competition is going to be precision. On top of that, you have months if not years to prepare for the show.
I know in CT all executive chefs and/or owners are required to take and pass the ServSafe food safety test, which among other things has food minimum heating temps, and we must keep up to date with changes/retake the test every 5 years. This test is standard and required in the vast majority of states, but I don't think all of them. Our first exec chef was the most talented cook we have hired, but he also failed the test partially because he didn't know any of the minimum heating temps (which most true food aficionados would scoff at and claim to be too high).
145 is pretty much the exact temp I would expect somebody who was forced to get a ServSafe certificate to guess if they never actually used thermometers when cooking.
I completely forgot to even look for Besh in this last ep. I liked Tanya but that was a pretty bad fail on her part. She does seem like an awesome chef. Everyone this season seems solid, no one that we are going to say is up there with the best of all seasons but definitely strong across the board.
Wow talk about a sore loser. 3 weeks in a row Claudette throws someone under the bus and then just walks out when she finds out she's eliminated. Sorry, but your dishes suck.
She crushed LCK and made a ton of food that looked great. The only times she didn't do well were group challenges since she clearly didn't get along great with a lot (any?) of the chefs. Though it was interesting that they seemed to be functioning well as a team and things only got nasty at judge's table. It was a different kind of Restaurant Wars meltdown.
Joe having a goofy mustache and being into crystals is a little more than I can stand. Seemed like he should have gone home this week, either for the cauliflower or the mac and cheese.
I loved how he said he re-arranged his crystals and felt better, and then proceeded to have his worst week on the show.